


six minutes of footage

by Red



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Big Mutant Family, Calm Down Erik, Charles isn't even here, Erik is a Father, Erik is a Troll, Fatherhood, Gen, Humor, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Snow Day, Teenagers, dadneto, pointless fics, real events being a dad with a video camera somewhere in america
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-21
Updated: 2014-02-21
Packaged: 2018-01-13 06:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1215541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by a video of a dad doing... exactly this. </p><p>It's Polar Vortex Season in the Lensherr-Xavier neck of the woods, so naturally Erik has taken it upon himself to pick the twins up from school. What starts as a tedious chore ends in a good vantage point to watch dozens of teenagers skid out on a patch of ice, and an excuse for some family bonding with the twins over a shared familial appreciation of schadenfreude.</p>
            </blockquote>





	six minutes of footage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cygnaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnaut/gifts).



> Thank you to cygnaut for posting this video on twitter. Fair warning, this fic is just silly and pretty much a straight-up fic version of the footage, which you can watch either on my [tumblr post of the fic](http://panzercat.tumblr.com/post/77301318382/six-minutes-of-footage-xmfc-gen-dadneto-fic-sigh) or over [here](http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/15/dad-on-school-run-cant-stop-laughing-at-pupils-slipping-on-ice-4305694/).

Wednesday afternoon, it's piercing cold, the first good snow of the year has just compacted into a street-wide sheet of ice, and Erik is cursing the entire halting drive to school. 

Erik doesn't remember this early-release garbage from when he was a kid. And even if the twins are midway through sophomore year, and even if Erik's had time to get used to the short-Wednesday concept, he's not prepared to let it slide. 

Sure, he works from the home office part-time, he can afford to take a break to run and get the kids. And, whatever, maybe this semester Wednesdays are just one early-morning lecture for Charles and he's been doing this anyway. Yeah, and okay, there's maybe still a bus for back up. 

But still. 

Think of the implications for most working parents! Think of the daycare costs, of the implications in adolescent development! It’s absurd. 

Pulling around a Yaris driving a max of one mile per, Erik is now annoyed enough to use his powers to operate the van, not the controls. He's barely two blocks from the house and he's been in this van for a month.

Of course, Erik has learned to use hand controls, he did ages ago. Between his mood and the road conditions, though, Erik isn’t in the mood to remember he can’t exactly _stomp_ on the brakes. When he'd installed the controls, he forgot the part where most people leave the damn foot pedals intact. And they do also have the car--a little one that’s soon to be wreckage thanks to the twins anyway--but it isn’t like Erik's gonna put snow tires on every damn vehicle in their drive, so yet again he just has himself to be annoyed with. 

Calm down, he tells himself. Charles's van is plenty. He drums his hands impatiently against the wheel as he waits about seven hours for one fucking car to make a single right turn. 

After all, it's not as if anyone needs to be driving in this weather. Particularly not the twins, who somehow collectively mind-whammied Charles into taking them to get their learner's permits a week before the city was polar vortexed. They've given up the begging by now, but it’s still promising to be a long winter. 

And now he's going to be trapped in the van with them. For as long as it takes to get home. Erik glares at the other cars on the road, all of which seem to decelerate a bit more every time looks. 

«Why did I insist on doing this?» he asks himself, and of course, since he's still this side of the fire station and therefore well within Charles's ridiculously oversized telepathic range he gets a very definite «serves you right» back. He sends «I wasn't talking to you», and earns a general sense of smugness from their connection. 

He loves his husband more and more, he reminds himself, every single day. 

It takes over a half-hour to get to the school. And by the time he's pulled up to the curb--not far from where he usually does, by the corner and a good distance from the main entrance--there's already kids milling out of the building. 

A lot of them are goofing off, tossing snow at each other and jumping into drifts. Just as many are trying to book it into the waiting buses or their parent's cars, as hardly any of them are properly dressed for the cold, at least as far as Erik's concerned. He doesn't yet see Wanda or Pietro--both of whom are also now too old for proper winter wear, despite anything Erik has to say on the matter--but that's normal. Wanda tends to lag since she wraps up with band on Wednesdays. And, despite his growing powers, Pietro's eternally in a state of twenty minutes late. Kid defies physics. 

Still, Erik pulls his cell out and texts the twins just in case they're looking for their Dad. Charles is perfectly happy to embarrass the twins any day of the week, parking as near to the front entrance as possible without him actually purchasing a yellow bus. 

Message sent, Erik hunkers down with the heater on, ignoring all the commotion outside. That is, at first. 

Suddenly, he hears someone yell, and feels about a dollar in change and three pens and a notebook spiral and all the other usual bits of metal that make up a teenager's backpack take a sharp drop, and Erik looks up to see a girl laughing at her friend splayed back in the snow. Erik sits up, alarmed, but it's soon obvious there's no harm done. The girl helps up her friend, who's now laughing as well, and the two walk on. And Erik goes back to cleaning out his inbox, a chore he only gets around to while waiting on something else, but not even a minute has passed before he feels it again.

The sudden wrenching of a backpack, the startled laughter from a group of kids. Erik straightens up from his slouch once again. Sure, chances are, all kids are just this clumsy, but--

A lone boy is walking down the sidewalk, beyond where this last set of girls are brushing the snow off their companion's bag. He's not looking at them, though, he's looking at his cell as he turns the corner, and sure enough--there's a bit of sidewalk that Erik thought was just shoveled snow that some kids knocked over and that had since been trampled down--he slips, tries to correct himself, and just overcorrects himself right into the lawn. 

He should be concerned. Surely this is just irresponsible groundskeeping on the part of the school district. Bad enough Erik has to drive out to get his kids this early in the day in these conditions, the school should be able to keep kids safe for the meager distance it takes them to get to a car, and--

Another kid skids and stumbles into the back of the texting boy, and Erik can't help himself. He’s grinning. 

It's just that--he watches _another_ kid stumble, not a minute after the last two, and now he's snickering. It just that it _keeps happening_ , over and over. It’s just that no one seems to notice or care when the person two steps ahead of them falls. They don't walk around the ice, they don't try to step any more cautiously, they just go for it, and then they're eating ice, too. It's brilliant, and soon Erik is laughing harder than he has in ages. 

"Teenage minds are… different," Charles once diplomatically put it, when they found eighteen stolen carwash signs in the garage and Pietro offered a lackluster confession with no answers to _why carwash signs,_ and _seriously, why this many homemade carwash signs_ and _really, Pietro, eighteen of them?_. 

If anything, this is proof positive that learner's permits should be issued at eighteen. Another kid stumbles, catching herself on a friend, which only sends them both to the sidewalk. Twenty, Erik corrects.

He's gonna have a kick out of telling Charles about this. It's just a pity the kids didn't get Charles's powers. They'd kill to see this happening to their classmates, and in the same thought Erik looks down at his cell. 

Probably shouldn't, he thinks. It's not exactly something Charles would think highly of, and it'll probably be a bad influence on the kids or something, but--

He turns on the camera, sets it to the video function, and has it positioned just in time to catch the middle of the Summers clan smack face-first into a snowdrift. 

"Okay," Erik says, trying not to laugh. Over the years, he’s developed a habit of narrating his home videos, which drives everyone but Charles absolutely insane. He's never gone out and said, but it's clear to Erik how unsettled Charles can get from film without some narrative thought process.

"So, everybody has been slipping on the ice here." The Summers kid is standing up and walking on, not even bothering to brush the snow off, and four girls start walking around the corner. "Let's see what these ladies do."

And sure enough, two of them slip. One corrects herself to run off, but the other falls right down, and Erik starts snickering. "Well, got one down," he says. Almost immediately, another pair of kids start walking right into danger, and Erik's saying "they're gonna fall, just watch," through his laughter. 

When they don't, he can't help making surprised and almost disappointed "oh,” and that--that's exactly the moment he knows there’s no way he can _ever_ let Charles see this. 

He really can't even _think_ about this around Charles, Erik tells himself, watching as a girl--one of Wanda's friends, actually, who's carrying what looks like a sheet of cookies--rounds the corner. She seems steady enough at first, but he can tell she isn't paying any attention at all to her surroundings. "She'll fall," he says, and sure enough she does; she smacks right onto her back but manages to hold the cookie sheet level with a burst of her own kinetic energy. It's actually a minor miracle no one's exploded the van or read him laughing his ass off in here or both, the amount of mutant kids that go to this school, but Erik supposes it'd serve him right. 

Another boy--Doug, Erik thinks, a low-level mutant kid that Pietro had a science project with one year--is coming down the sidewalk now, and he's not being terribly cautious about it. "We got another kid coming, and he's going pretty fast," Erik says, "and if he turns, I guarantee he will drill it. And here it comes. Right about--now," and as if on cue Doug is on the ground. "Oh, ouch," Erik says, cheerfully. 

This, he decides, is the best day he's had all week. 

Three more kids manage to pass the ice without incident, and after that there's one of those natural lulls in the foot traffic. Erik explains to the camera that he's going to have the video paused till he has more victims. 

Even with the lull, he's still grinning. Just thinking of the--what, two minutes?--footage he must have puts him in a terrific mood. Thank goodness he insisted on driving, Charles just would not appreciate this sort of humor. He wouldn't even be anywhere near this vantage point to film it; he'd be up by the front entrance. He’d just pick up on the those first few spikes of surprise in the general dark miasma which is hundreds of teenage brains and send a message to the custodian. It's tragic, Erik thinks, that there's a universe out there where Kitty from synagogue didn't just phase through three of her classmates after skidding out on this corner. He's able to restart the recording just in time to catch the end of that--Kitty squealing and waving at him as the other kids shake themselves off. "That was great," he narrates, just as a bunch more kids come racing down the sidewalk. "Watch this, this will be perfection." 

Sure enough, almost all the kids slip as one. "Boom, boom, boom," he says, laughing, and then noticing one of the girls is wincing, he adds "Oh, she is down. That hurt, that definitely hurt." Maybe he should get out and help, but--well. He doubts that anything is _broken_ , and he doesn’t think he can stop smirking long enough to look sympathetic. 

"Ouch," he repeats, "This is terrible." He's aware he doesn't sound at all like he believes that, and as the girl's helped up by her friend, he says to himself, "well, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing _with_ you." 

By now he can see Wanda. Before she gets to the corner, he's wondering if she'll fall, too. Hopefully he's raised her to be a _little_ more perceptive of her elements, but he can't help keep his powers from reaching out warily for whatever metal she has with her. She's walking with a large group of kids, though, and she winds up avoiding the ice entirely, skirting around to walk on the snow--only to turn to watch the others slip and run into each other. She walks back, then, to try it out herself: skating on her sneakers a few times and steadying herself easily when she slips. Wanda's always been too nervous to use her powers to just mess around, unlike a lot of kids. She's afraid to throw a single accidental hex in public, and Erik can tell when she stops skating, it's not because she's bored. At least she's still laughing when she walks up to the van.

"Hey," she says in the greeting of her people. Her nose and cheeks and the tops of her ears are bright red, and immediately, there is a large puddle of slush on the floor of the van in front of her. She drops her bag right in the middle of it. Erik would normally say something just for the sake of argument, but there's two kids stumbling and trying to catch themselves only to smack into each other and fall, and he's snickering too hard to speak. 

Wanda's always been a little too serious of a kid, but right away, she's giggling, too. "Oh my god," she says, rubbing her hands together right by the heat. 

"Yeah, I got--" he looks down at the screen to double check, "--three and a half minutes of you guys falling," and she really cracks up. 

" _What_? Oh no, Dad’s so gonna put you in a plastic box," she accuses, but before Erik can say anything she adds, "but that’s like, the best thing ever." She pushes some of her hair back from where it's escaped her headband--which is not, Erik would like stated for the record, a proper hat and if she gets pneumonia it is not his fault--and leans forward to watch the pedestrians. 

"Well, what he doesn’t know," Erik says. Another kid is running down the sidewalk, waving down his ride. "Oh, watch this guy. I promise you, he's gonna drill it." He falls, and Wanda laughs harder and Erik’s now been laughing so long that he’s coughing, and when the guy _behind_ that kid falls right away Wanda's in tears. 

"He didn't even see that coming! How did he--'oh my friend just fell, what's the probability that I'll eat it,' oh my _god_ ," she trails off, giggling. 

She keeps laughing the whole time they're waiting for Pietro, cracking up harder when Erik keeps predicting who's about to experience a swift lesson in physics. Sometimes they both call someone as a definite fall, and they somehow skate by--most astonishingly, a tall kid who's on her cell and _running_ , and Erik would suspect mutation if that wasn't just such a natural talent for a kid of her age--but more often than not, they successfully predict fall after fall, and neither of them work up the personal responsibility to warn anyone off; neither of them think of telling any staff. 

At one point, the moment Erik realizes he was subconsciously dreading all along happens: he finally sees that Frederick kid coming. By this point, Erik can't hold back the commentary, particularly now that he's got Wanda as captive audience.

"Uh oh," he says. "Not good. Not good," because of his many virtues, Freddie is not exactly _small_. He also managed to forget his bag today, and he's got a stack of textbooks in his arms, and he's clearly not looking where he's going, and if eight years of picking his kids up from the town's only mutant daycare ever taught Erik anything it's that Frederick Dukes is as graceful as a drunk bear and growing to be the size of two. 

"Abort mission," he says. Wanda's got her hands over her mouth, snickering. 

"Disaster imminent," she agrees, "Abort mission, abort mission!"

And Freddie, sure enough, barely even stumbles before he's just on the ground, books everywhere. Wanda manages to gasp out, "we got a man down" through her giggling, which only makes Erik laugh harder. "Oh, that poor kid," he tries to say, but he doesn't know if Wanda can even understand him through their collective hysteria. He's rubbing his side, trying to catch his breath, when Wanda shakes her head and says, "This isn't good," trying her best to sober up. Erik nods. 

"Poor Freddie," he says, though Fredrick is the person most capable of bouncing back from something like that, you got to feel sorry for him. "Where's his bag?" Erik asks himself. He's starting to feel a like a bad father, even if Freddie isn't his. But then, he and Wanda can't stay serious long, since generally speaking wherever Freddie is Mort is bound to follow. Sure enough--despite his usual agility, Mort is on the ice and down in seconds. 

They're both laughing, Erik too hard to pay attention to who else is coming, but soon Wanda's rolling down the window.

"Jean! JEEEAAAAAAN! JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAN," Wanda calls out at the loudest possible volume, all guilt about laughing at her classmates seemingly gone. Erik winces as Wanda continues to page her _telepathic_ friend via endless yodeling. Eventually, Jean spares Erik's hearing and trundles on over, dodging Mortimer who has slipped again while getting up. 

"Didya see that?" Wanda asks through the window, taking advantage of Erik's good mood to heat the entire city with the van's engine, "Everyone keeps falling." 

Jean has the arms of her sweatshirt pulled over her hands, shivering, but she grins at them. "Yeah, I can hear you guys from, like, the gym," she says. Erik shrugs, unrepentant. He doesn't have to explain himself to telepaths under the age of thirty. 

"We can't stop laughing," Wanda giggles, watching as Mortimer and Freddie finally manage to stand. 

"He's gonna fall again," Erik predicts, watching Freddie stand there, trying to balance his books. Poor kid, he thinks again. 

He glances over at Jean. "Need a ride, Jeannie?" he asks, using the she-hasn’t-been-Jeannie-since-she-was-like-three nickname just to annoy Wanda. Jean doesn’t ever seem to mind--telepaths stick together, and since she manifested so young she’s practically a spare kid--but maybe she’s too polite to say. Unlike Erik's _actual kids_. The Grey’s place isn't really on the way, but it's cold out and Erik really just wants the window shut so all the _non-psychic_ kids won't hear them laughing clear from the gym. 

"Naw, Mr. Lensherr," she says, "I'm getting a ride from Scott." 

"I don’t know. If he drives like he walks--"

" _Father_ ," Wanda interrupts. 

"I have footage," he says, proud of the fact. "Wait till it's on YouTube… Look, Wanda--he didn't fall!" he points out Freddie, and keeps recording as the kid carries on down the path. 

"Oh my god. Sorry my father is super evil," Wanda mock-whispers, and Jean shakes her head. 

"It happens," Jean says, waving as she heads back to the path. “Okay guys I’m freezing. Bye!” 

"See ya," Wanda replies, rolling up the window. 

They watch a few more kids successfully navigate the ice, and when there's another lull while they wait for Pietro, he pauses the tape. Wanda's still smiling, wiping her eyes with the end of her scarf. 

She’s such a level-headed, smart kid, Erik thinks. What if she goes to college early, like Charles did? He looks down at the phone while Wanda peers at herself in the side-view mirror, while she fusses with her hair. 

"I need to be serious, now, Wanda,” he says, and she looks up at him, frowning. Whenever she does that, she looks so very much like Charles. It seems impossible she doesn’t share his genes. “Be completely level with me here. How many likes do you think this would get," he asks, and she starts giggling. "Wanda! Be serious. What I'm asking here is, could I be tumblr famous? It's the last square on my world domination bingo card, and-" 

By now Wanda's laughing hard enough that it's not worth talking to her, and Erik grins, proud as ever to see her be this carefree and, well. This like a kid. It wasn't that long ago that mutants basically had to grow up the minute they manifested power, and for Wanda and Pietro, this--a chance to be irresponsible, to have fun--is all Erik ever wanted. 

"You are such a nerd," Wanda accuses, "tumblr and YouTube aren't even owned by the same company." 

"Oh, now who's the nerd," he says, faking insult. Wanda looks like she's about to say something, when Erik spots someone in the distance. 

Someone with silver hair.

Someone who is moving at an alarming speed.

"Hold up, look. Look," he says, turning the recorder back on. 

"Uh oh," she says. 

"This is going to be terrific," Erik agrees, and he and Wanda lean forward, waiting for impact. 

They're both snickering long before he gets there, both ready for Pietro’s inevitable crash landing, but actually, when he’s on the ice--he's fine. Erik's astonished. “Huh,” he winds up saying. 

It’s odd. It’s not like he walked around it or anything, and Pietro’s just had a growth spurt and isn’t particularly coordinated. Maybe when he uses his power, it accentuates balance? Erik isn’t sure, and either way, Pietro stops before walking around a bit, testing the ice. He’s soon sliding around, skating just like his twin had before. 

"Aw," Wanda says. 

"Yeah, huh. Guess not." 

Pietro slides around, two of his friends catch up and join him, and Erik sighs. "Oh, come on. These guys, right?” he gestures at Pietro’s friends, who share that same general grace common to fifteen-year-old boys. “One of these guys has _got_ to fall." 

The three of them skate around, perfect balance. It's actually a little disappointing. 

Right up until Pietro attempts to--well, it looks like do a moonwalk, but Erik has no clue if that's actually what his genius son is trying for--and falls, taking out his friends with him. 

Erik and Wanda both crack up right away, Wanda fighting to catch her breath just to say, "We're kinda terrible people," which only makes Erik double over the steering wheel, barely able to keep the phone level with his powers. They're in tears by the time Pietro's got back up and opened the sliding door. 

"That was so awesome," he's hollering back to his friends as he ducks into the van. He throws his bag in the back and tracks another few gallons of slush along the flooring. There’s snow in his hair. "Hey guys," he offers as greeting. 

"Hey," Wanda replies, sitting up and faking that she's the dignified older sibling, which would be a great act if they didn't all know she only beat him by minutes. 

"Slick moves out there," Erik says while Pietro buckles up. 

"Ugh, you guys were _watching_?" he asks, and Wanda turns around to smirk at him, wide and toothy despite the braces. Sometimes, Erik thinks, it's real obvious she does share _his_ genes. 

"Even better," she says.

On cue Erik holds up the phone; he’s since stopped filming. "Dozens of students, one patch of ice, six minutes of footage." 

Pietro laughs and reaches to grab at the phone. "Oh my god, you've so won World's Coolest Parental Unit again." It would just be one of those dumb things a kid would say, except for the fact that there is, quite literally, an award that the twins bought two years ago as a gag gift on Father's Day that's engraved, "World's Coolest Dad." The award is bequeathed, usually with much fanfare, to either him or Charles at varying intervals. 

Too long has the trophy been on Charles's desk, and it’s about time it returned to its rightful home on Erik's. He grins at his kids, holding the phone just out of reach with his powers as he starts up the engine. "Okay, but--"

"But no telling Dad," the twins chorus. Before can even start the car, Wanda tells him to stop, she can't possibly wait for her turn for the phone, even if she did get to see half the falls in real time. She gets in the back seat with her brother, buckling in before they start up the video. 

Been a long time, Erik thinks, since he's rode alone in front. The kids love to fight for shotgun. And usually Charles drives, anyway. It's a little disarming. Has it been since they were in car seats? Has that really only been a decade and change? Erik glances up in the rearview to look at them bent over his phone, shoulder to shoulder. 

Pulling the van out into the sluggish traffic, he thinks that--well, at least this driving thing is going to make the next year arduous enough that he won't feel like his time with these two is slipping by. And maybe, he thinks, drumming on the hand controls, maybe Charles would like another kid? Maybe it's almost time for that conversation, though the size of the house--

"Oh my god," the kids yell as one, loud enough that he startles into tugging the break, and only doesn't spin out because he's got decent tires and ferrokinesis. He glares at the twins through the mirror, but they pay him no mind. 

Maybe once they move out, he thinks. Maybe after a vacation. A long one. Somewhere warm, without snow, and without a thirty-minute drive where your kids watch the same video five times. 

But even after he's passed the fire station and there's no way the kids care enough to shield anything at all from Charles, Erik can't stop himself from grinning, just to hear them laugh.


End file.
